


pieces (skin to bone)

by nasa



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Addiction, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Substance Abuse, Suicide Attempt, kind of - he wants to see the dead so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 21:35:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17906096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasa/pseuds/nasa
Summary: The first time Klaus dies, he is thirteen. He dies again at seventeen, eighteen, twenty-four. By his fifth death, he has resigned himself to the blackness that awaits him. Not that he much cares: anything would be better than this, even blissful oblivion, even floating in blackness until his mind decays, and, like Five, he starts seeing people where there aren’t there, falling in love with a mannequin or a fleck of dust in his eye.-Dave won't come to Klaus, so Klaus decides to go to him.





	pieces (skin to bone)

The first time Klaus dies, he is thirteen. It is his first overdose, and the only one that he can honestly say was entirely accidental. It was his first time using this particular dealer, and he hadn’t realized how much his old one was diluting his blow. He takes two huge sniffs before it hits him, acid in his veins, and he thinks,  _oh, God,_ but it’s a numb thing. Cocaine is nice like that: it quickens the mind but quiets the emotions, so you can live in an emotionless, word-fast world of black and white newsprint and unfettered thought.

He passes out in the middle of his bedroom, right there on the old, creaky floors. Mom is the one who finds him, the one who carries him to the medical ward and hooks him up to an artificial respirator, who shocks his heart when it starts to stutter. He doesn’t remember any of this, of course: the first thing he recalls, after that heavy fall to the ground, is the blue-black specter of a mugging victim glowering down at him from above his bed.  _Help me,_ she hisses, voice thick through her split and swollen lip. The room is empty aside from the ghost and the steadily beeping medical equipment.  _I need you to help me, Klaus._

She is entirely ordinary: like all other ghosts, she is here to take advantage and nothing more. Klaus closes his eyes and focuses on the rasping of the respirator stuck, like a pole, into his lungs. In, out, in, out; he can almost imagine it’s the sound of someone else breathing. He drifts off, and when he wakes again, Mom is there, as cheerful as always, helping him vomit up the life support from his chest. By that evening, he’s back out on the streets, buying coke from the same guy for the same price in the same sleazy back alley. He dies but he doesn’t change, because, really, what would be in the point in that?

-

He dies again at seventeen, eighteen, twenty-four. Each time is brief and uneventful; he doesn’t remember anything of the other side, bright light or otherwise, and eventually he begins to convince himself that maybe he just hasn’t made the cut. After all, what other explanation could there be? He knows there must be something after this - everyone he sees is proof of that, every shattered husk of a soul hovering around him like a dark mist he can’t quite swipe away. They must come from somewhere.

But if it exists, it’s a place he’s not allowed to go, and so, by his fifth death, he has resigned himself to the blackness that awaits him. Not that he much cares. Anything would be better than this, even blissful oblivion, even floating in blackness until his mind decays, and, like Five, he starts seeing people where there aren’t there, falling in love with a mannequin or a fleck of dust in his eye.

“You know, I wouldn’t have to do this if you weren’t being so stubborn,” Klaus says now, flicking his fingers under the bathtub tap to test the water temperature. Hot, but not boiling - good. “We could both stay here in the real world, have some pizza and watch TV, but no, you’ve gotta be a fucking asshole.”

“You shouldn’t do this, Klaus,” someone says, but it's not the person he was talking to, so he ignores them. Instead, he takes a bottle of bubble bath that he’d stolen from Allison’s old room and dumping it under the faucet. It comes out slow and thick, like maybe it’s gone bad, but when the water hits it it froths obligingly, so he figures it’s fine. What the worst that can happen, anyway - he dies? Hilarious.

“Where is this going to leave me, huh?" Ben asks. "I’m going to lose my mind by myself.”

“Oh, honeybee, you’ll be fine,” Klaus says. He pushes himself to his feet and starts shedding clothes - shirt, socks, pants. “You better look away if you don’t want to see my dick.”

Ben rolls his eyes. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it before,” he says, but obligingly turns his head away so Klaus can drop his boxers and slide into the tub. The water sloshes against the rim; almost full enough, Klaus thinks. Really, it only has to be full enough for his head to go fully under, but he thinks it’d be nice to die with a little bit of comfort. Besides, it’s not like the extra few minutes waiting for the bath to fill up will make any difference.

For a little while, there is quiet, just the sound of the faucet running. Then Ben speaks.

“You’re not being rational about this,” Ben says from where he’s perched over on the closed toilet seat. “What if you can’t find him? You don’t know how your powers will work when you’re dead too.”

Klaus is pretty sure they won’t work at all, actually, but if this is a facade that’ll make Ben feel a little better, he can maintain it for the next few minutes. “I have to give it a shot, don’t I?”

“No,” Ben says immediately. “You don’t.”

Klaus swallows hard. “You don’t understand,” he says around the suddenly swelling lump in his throat. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

Ben raises a brow. “I lost my whole life.”

“But you didn’t lose someone.” Klaus shakes his head, sinking a little deeper in the water. It’s almost full, now. Almost time. “It’s not the same. I would - I actually cared about him more than myself. Do you know how fucking insane that is?”

“I’m well aware,” Ben says dryly.

“If anyone else had powers like mine, they would do the exact same thing. It’d be stupid not to.”

“You’re better than that.”

Klaus actually snorts at that, turning to raise an eyebrow in Ben’s direction. “When have I ever been better than anyone at anything?”

Ben shakes his head, not interested in the bait. “You could be,” he says. “You should be.”

“Well, I’m not,” Klaus says shortly, turning away from Ben. The bath is full, now, almost overflowing, and Klaus reaches forward to twist off the tap. “Come on, lighten up. The chances of me actually permanently dying from this are - pretty low, really, when you consider how many times I’ve died before. It’s been a few years, actually, I’m probably due.”

“He wouldn’t want you to do this,” Ben warns.

Klaus laughs, a hollow thing. “What do you know about what he would have wanted? Besides, he’s not here, is he? If he would just  _show up -_ “ He shouts the words at the ceiling, as if that is where Dave is stowed away, an elaborate game of hide and seek - “I wouldn’t have to do this. But he won’t show up, so now I gotta remind him who the real stubborn one in this relationship is.”

Ben just sighs. “You could have at least warned someone about what you were doing,” he says.

“Please, and ruin the fun? Nothing’s exciting without a little danger, Bennie, you know that.”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Ben says. “One of these days you’re really gonna get yourself killed.”

“Yeah, well.” Suddenly, Klaus can’t think of anything to see. Across the room, Klaus can catch a glimpse of himself in the cracked bathroom vanity mirror, a corner of his forehead, the edge of an eyebrow. The grime on the mirror makes him look fuzzy on the edges, like the ghosts who live in Klaus’s orbit. “Would that be the worse thing in the world?”

Ben is making a noise, and rising as if to come touch him. “Klaus -“ he starts.

“See you on the flip side, bro,” Klaus says, and, before he can lose his nerve, ducks under the surface of the water.

It takes willpower to drown yourself, Klaus knows, but he expects it won’t be too much of a problem. In this one regard, willpower is something he has in spades, because even as his limbs start to tingle, his lungs start to ache, oxygen hunger eating him up from the inside out, he pictures Dave and is still. Dave, the very first day they met, the shine of his eyes and the rasp of his voice; Dave in the army barracks, hands careful and warm as he showed Klaus how to dissemble, reassemble, shoot a gun; Dave under the hallucinogenic lights of the club as they danced away their terror, touched casually and not too close, until later, when they could sneak away to the men’s room to fuck in a stall only half a dozen feet from a drunken corporal babbling about atom bombs, because who cares if they get caught, they’re dying soon anyway, and they might as well go out with as many colors as they can catch.

He thinks about Dave so much he starts to see him through the hazy-sheen of water and half-closed eyes. He’s hovering above the bathtub; there’s blood on his temple, and on his chest, a blossom like a rose right over his heart. He’s so beautiful, and Klaus thinks,  _if I can just hold on a little longer._

The oxygen deprivation hits Klaus’s throat and he has to bite down chokes. He knows he’ll drown eventually, but he’d rather suffocate a little longer before he has to feel the hot, murky water flooding his own lungs. Besides, Dave looks so nice like this, and Klaus is sure he’ll be distracted enough by the feeling of dying that he won’t be able to remember.

Eventually, though, even the power of love can’t win out, and Klaus’s vision darkens and narrows.  _I love you,_ Klaus thinks, though he cannot say it.  _I’ll see you soon._

He opens his mouth -

And is torn from the tub by firm hands tucked under his arms. “Breathe,” someone instructs, but it’s all Klaus can do to cough and splutter up the water burning at him.

“Jesus  _fuck,”_ he wheezes, yanking free from whoever is touching him. If it’s Diego - or, god, worse,  _Luther_ \- he’s going to snap a fucking neck for this, because you’d think, after all this time ignoring him, hating him, wishing he were gone, they could take this for the gift it was.

“Just take a breath,” someone says, and Klaus realizes it’s Ben. He’s knelt beside the tub, next to the boots of Klaus’s rescuer, and Klaus is ready to spit out some sort of insult when it strikes him. He knows those boots. They’re thick and green, army-issue, with jagged scuffs up the sides from barbed wire. They were new when he died; he’d been so ridiculously excited to get them, a kid in a candy store, Klaus with an endless supply of heroin. He looks up.

There, standing above him, is Dave. He looks exactly the same as the day he died, aside from the fact his face is no longer blank and lifeless but pinched and worried. “What were you thinking?” he demands, and it’s so achingly familiar that it’s all Klaus can do to stumble to his feet and throw his arms around Dave’s neck.

“You’re here,” he rasps, stunned. Dave is here and Klaus is  _touching_ him. Dave is here and he’s corporeal, he smells like cedar and his fatigues are just as rough as Klaus remembers and if this is what Klaus gets for trying to kill himself, he’ll do it every day.

“I’m here,” Dave agrees, splaying his hands on Klaus’s wet back. Klaus huffs out a noise that’s half sigh, half - what the hell, he doesn’t know, and lets his head sag down onto Dave’s neck. Dave starts rubbing circles at the bottom of his spine.

“So, I’m going to give you a minute.”

Klaus almost laughs at the reminder that Ben is still in the room, but instead he just lifts one hand and flops it in Ben’s direction. “Shoo.”

“Always so sweet,” Ben says dryly, and a moment later, he’s gone. Klaus doesn’t look up to check, or do anything but burrow himself closer to Dave, so their bodies are touching from forehead to toes.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Dave says, after another few moments. “That was - dangerous.”

“Yeah, well,” Klaus sniffs, finally leaning back to look Dave in the eye. He’d be embarrassed that he’s crying, but he’s long since learned not to be afraid of Dave. Dave knows him, knows him from atom to organ, and he’s never turned him away. He won’t do it now. “That’s what you get for not coming when I summon you, asshole.”

Dave rolls his eyes. “You’re the most stubborn man alive,” he says.

“Yep,” Klaus agrees. “And you’re the most stubborn man dead. Now kiss me.”

“Asshole,” Dave echoes, but he obliges. His lips aren’t quite as warm as Klaus remembers, his skin not quite as soft, but the weight of him around Klaus’s body, the smooth slickness of his mouth - that’s exactly the same.

Klaus falls into it.

**Author's Note:**

> so this has two interpretations: either a) dave really did manifest bc klaus was being an idiot and klaus is just powerful enough to make him manifest, or b) klaus actually died and getting pulled out of the bathtub was his step into his sort of heaven. you decide!
> 
> title from lovely by Billie Eilish and Khalid


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